Bitcoin
Trump calls for US to be ‘crypto capital of the planet’ in appeal to Nashville bitcoin conference
Former President Donald Trump has laid out his plans to wholeheartedly embrace cryptocurrency if elected to a second term.
Per
KIMBERLEE KRUESI Associated Press
July 27, 2024, 5:51 PM ET
• 3 min read
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Former President Donald Trump on Saturday he laid out his plans to embrace with all his heart cryptocurrency if elected to a second term, telling hundreds of enthusiastic supporters of digital tokens that he wants the US to be a “bitcoin superpower” under his leadership.
In his keynote address at a bitcoin conference in Nashville, Tennessee, the Republican presidential candidate promised to make the United States the “crypto capital of the planet” and create a “strategic reserve” of bitcoin using the currency the government currently holds.
He also promised to remove the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Gary Gensler if elected and implement a cryptocurrency advisory board, teasing the crowd by asking attendees if anyone would like to participate.
“We will have regulations, but from now on the rules will be written by people who love their industry, not hate their industry,” he said.
Trump’s keynote speech at the Bitcoin 2024 conference showed how radically his stance on cryptocurrencies has changed over time.
He hasn’t always been a fan of cryptocurrencies, writing on social media in 2019 that their “value is highly volatile and based on nothing.”
He has embraced digital currency in recent years, and in May his campaign began accepting cryptocurrency donations.
Throughout the nearly 50-minute speech, Trump repeatedly attempted to contrast his support for cryptocurrency with the Biden administration efforts to regulate the industrytelling the crowd that the federal government was “blocking their path.” Trump said he wanted cryptocurrency to be “mined, minted and made” in the United States.
The former president appealed to bitcoin fans by pointing to seizures of the digital token by US law enforcement authorities.
“They took it from you,” he said. “So as I take steps to transform this vast wealth into a permanent national asset to benefit all Americans, today I repeat my promise to commute Ross Ulbricht’s sentence.”
Ulbricht created the underground drug-selling website Silk Road but was sentenced to life in prison after a judge found him responsible for six overdose deaths linked to his site. Some of the nearly 800 people who gathered in downtown Nashville to hear Trump speak wore “Free Ross Day One” hats, a nod to Ulbricht’s prison sentence.
Tennessee U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn called Trump’s announcement of a strategic bitcoin reserve a “historic moment.”
Trump’s comments came a day after the independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spoke at the conference and also proposed the launch of a strategic bitcoin reserve.
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Associated Press writer Ali Swenson in New York contributed to this report.